Hi,

do you mean binding done by data source controls? If you bind manually that
of course happens whenever you call dataBind() for the control, so when that
happens is up to you, the page developer.

Yes you could do that with DataBound event. Data source conrreols also have
their own events like SqldataSource's Selected event

Quite common is that on first request, control are bound at PreRender stage
but on postback they must then be populated before Page_Load because
postback data is already loaded before that, so data in lists etc must exist
so that state change based on postback data, can be made.

SqldataSource for example gets its select operation called in PreRender by
the databound controls.